Chapter 9
The next day followed the typical schedule for the Marks family:
At 6:20 a.m., Willa’s watch woke her from six hours of Seroquel-assisted sleep. She felt dread creeping in, which her therapist had said was not productive, so she grumbled to herself, “It’s gonna be a great day” as she shut off the house alarm.
Next she padded to the boys’ rooms, flipped on their lights and yelled, “Get up, get up, get up!”
Pete hit the bathroom first, so Willa let Chicken out in the backyard.
6:25 a.m.: “Move your butts!”
“But I don’t wanna go to school,” Charlie whined from his mess of blankets, before starting up a fun argument over the merits of the American education system.
“Breakfast is in five,” Willa sighed, then took her turn in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, taking her medications, swiping on deodorant, and wishing she had more eyebrows.
Pete, with Heat Miser hair, prepped the bowls of cereal. “Bus comes in 10, guys.”
James did what Willa called his best “dejected Charlie Brown” trudge into the kitchen. “I don’t want Rice Chex.”
Pete: “You get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit.”
Charlie: “That doesn’t really rhyme.”
Willa: “Seven minutes.”
Then, chaos, as the boys scrambled to find a missing hoodie, or the homework they’d “forgotten” to complete, or remembered they were supposed to bring in a shoebox.
“Go!” Willa yelled, as she heard the bus’ airbrakes at the top of the hill.
The boys ran out, just as the bus door was opening in front of the driveway, and Willa and Pete waved from the front porch, the picture of domestic bliss. Then they collapsed back into bed until Pete got ready and left at 8:30 a.m. Willa started her work at 9 a.m. in her pajamas.
Between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., when the boys arrived home from after-school care, Willa worked, worked out, ran errands, drank three cups of iced coffee with oat milk, and scraped various sticky substances off of various surfaces. When the bus arrived at the bottom of the driveway at the end of the day, she quickly changed the boys into soccer clothes and dropped them at practice. Pete handled pick-up and dinner.
On this particular day, Willa next headed to the FitFams studio for a training session.
As she approached the front door she could see through the glass that Tara and Jem were sitting close, their heads touching, as they huddled over something — a white box. Tara whispered something in Jem’s ear, and she covered what looked like a coquettish smile.
“Hey, guys,” Willa said.
“Oh, hey,” Tara said, looking up from the box. “We were just looking at some new merch.”
She held up, from a black cord, what looked like a teardrop-shaped, rose quartz pendant about the size of her palm. “FitFams” was printed on one side.
“It’s a branded yoni egg,” Jem giggled.
“A yoni egg,” Willa said. “As in, a stone you put into your vagina and squeeze?”
“Yes!” Tara said, pleased that Willa knew what it was. “Dee swears that doing kegel exercises with one of these keeps things tight.”
Willa was pretty sure a rock was not one of the things you were supposed to put into a vagina. But anyway.
Tara dropped the egg back into the box. “OK, let’s train.”
Over the next hour, Willa learned some of the basic, straight-ahead FitFams moves — “Walk” (a warm-up, with slower speed and lower resistance); “Run” (fast speed, moderate resistance); “Sprint” (fastest speed, lower resistance); and “Crawl” (slower speed, crushing resistance) — as well as some of the more complicated ones.
There was the “Singing Ariel,” where your upper body faced forward but the pedals faced to the left, so you were in a twist that engaged your obliques. There was the “Granola,” where you faced forward but crunched your elbows down toward your knees with each step. The “Naruto Run” had you facing the back of the room and holding on to the side handlebars, then leaning out and going fast. There were more than 100 pages of these moves in the instruction manual.
“But you can’t just pick and choose a random bunch of these moves and string them together,” Tara said. “We do certain sequences on certain days. Every morning we send out the day’s sequence, and you have to memorize it that day.
“We also have a very specific way of calling out the moves,” Tara continued. “It goes like this: ‘In 20 seconds we will do the Naruto Run. You now have 18 seconds. Turn the speed to nine or above and the resistance to between three and five. You now have 15 seconds. Turn to the back and hold the handlebars. You now have 12 seconds. Lean forward. You now have 10 seconds. In eight seconds, go fast and hard. In five seconds, Naruto Run. Three, two, one.’”
Willa wasn’t used to following such a specific script. After teaching indoor cycling for so long, she’d often just wing it.
“Then, once the clients are in the move, you continue to coach. No dead air. Encourage them, but don’t give them excuses to quit,” Tara said. “While you’re doing this, you are to be calling the clients by name, touching them on the knee or elbow, and working the DJ station.”
Willa’s face had always been expressive; it’s what got her the lead in an all-girl summer camp production of “Oliver.” But it also telegraphed her feelings when she didn’t want it to.
Tara touched Willa’s arm. “It sounds like a lot, but it’s totally doable,” she said. “We believe in you. Now, Jem and I are gonna go, and you can practice the moves, practice the coaching, play with the DJ set-up, whatever you want. Just pull the door closed when you leave; it will lock automatically.”
Before Willa could say another word, and ask about validating her parking, they had grabbed the yoni egg and were gone.